[MPlayer-users] MPlayer consumes 30% of my Athlon XP 2200! plz help help lower this!

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 01:11:15AM -0800, dave giffin wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> I custom compiled mplayer1.0pre2 for my architecure
> (AthlonXP). When I run mplayer to playback a DVD
> either directly off my DVD-ROM or a VOB file ripped to
> my hard disk, mplayer uses anywhere from 10-25% of my
> CPU! Mplayer seems to use 20-25% usually when there is
> an action scene in the video so there are lots of
> frame changes. XFree86 fluctuates between 0 to 5% of
> my CPU and sometimes ESD will take up 1 or 2% too.

This doesn't sound abnormal.

> I use the 'xv' video output.

You could improve performance somewhat by using vidix, if your card is
supported. Anything that goes through the X server is slow. Also, ESD
is highly _not_ recommended, and could be slowing you down.

> I monitor all this using 'top' setting it to refresh
> every second and sort processes by CPU cycles.

I'm not sure these figures are entirely accurate. For example, top
shows my MPlayer using 0% cpu to play mp3 files...

> I've read that some people have used MPlayer on 200
> mhz systems and been able to playback DVDs. 

Not true. The absolute minimum for DVD playback is K6 500 MHz or
equivalent (probably P2 400 MHz). The "DVD playback on P-200/mmx"
tale involves using mga_vid for video and _heavy_ frame dropping.

> My AthlonXP system is at least 10 times faster (not to
> mention the various newer hardware optimizers builtin
> to AthlonXPs that Pentium2s didn't have)

10 times faster than what? Certainly not 10 times faster than my K6,
which again is the absolute minimum for DVD. Since you didn't include
the clock rate (just AMD's marketoid number), I can't really be sure,
but I would guess your cpu is about 5 or 6 times the speed of mine, in
which case the numbers make sense.

> So MPlayer shouldn't take up nearly as many of my
> system's resources as it does. Including esd and
> XFree86, I'd like to get playback with mplayer on my
> system to work with no more than 10% of my system
> resources. How can I do this?

Overclock to 3 GHz. ;)

> I know that MPlayer can send the video direct to a
> device like a TV-Out card, but I need the video to go
> to a window on my computer monitor.

Eh? What does this have to do with the rest of your email?

Rich